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Research questions

The ITS Edulab research program is above all practical: the program aims to solve real-life traffic related issues. Rijkswaterstaat, the operator of the Dutch main road network, formulates the research questions in cooperation with people from the educational institutes.

The questions are published on this website. Students can then choose a research question for their master thesis. They’ll start a project, that will result in a scientifical report.

Below we have listed all current research questions in alphabetical order.


Automatic incident detection

A rapid detection of incidents is necessary for a swift recovery of traffic after the occurrence of incidents. There are… Read More

Big data for traffic management

Big data is everywhere. But how can it be used in urban traffic management? Or in traffic information services that… Read More

Bottlenecks in road networks caused by incidents

The Dutch highway network is increasingly congested. Apart from fixed bottlenecks, this is for about 20% caused by incidents. In… Read More

Can data fusion improve traffic management?

Traffic management is an important tool to relieve congestion problems. For traffic management knowledge about the current traffic situation is… Read More

Cooperative and automated driving

Cooperative and automated driving have drawn a lot of attention the last couple of years. Experiments with automated driving are… Read More

Dynamic road pricing: is it worth the price?

Economically seen, it makes sense to vary the cost of using the road with the availability of road capacity. Politically,… Read More

Environmental effects of traffic

It is obvious that traffic has effects on the environment. Cars use fuel, produce noise and emit toxic gasses. Not to mention… Read More

Estimating incident duration

Informed travelers can better decide which route to take, and even whether or not to start traveling. Especially in case… Read More

Evaluation method

The Netherlands have a great deal of experience with implementing and evaluating intelligent transport systems (ITS). Since 1990, an improved… Read More

Flexible infrastructure

Although traffic demand fluctuates throughout the day, the infrastructure present to accommodate that demand is mostly fixed. Notable exceptions are… Read More